Originally Posted by Kostaz
Is the face you're using premade or result of some faceimproving mod that causes such tremendous improvement all across the board?

I spend more time modding sometimes then playing Texture mods only. I have spent a fair amount of time perfecting my ideal character for my final play through of skyrim ever since I got into modding. Lighting also makes a big difference. Here are three close ups shots with different lighting and some slight variations to the character as I refined him. I am not good at graphics so I can't mod textures - hence I have to shop around.

So what went into the character:

- Better Males by Sundracon (primarily the body, hands, feets)
- XCE (Xenius Character Enhancement). This is the main one as it does everything, body, eyes, lips, war paints (tats), skin pores, etc. I override XCE with Better Males for the 3 things I listed above, but the rest is all XCE, which I prefer as it tends to be more realistic.
- Better Face tints for males (Urshi), this only because it creates a more subtle effect for shadowing on eyes.
- XCE HR war paints for the tattoo
- Beards (HR Beard mod)
- Brows (HR Brow mod)
- Teeth (HR teeth mod although you really can't notice that so not really needed)

There are also mods for hair (I don't like them myself, most are to anime, and there are clipping issues with helmets), all types of fantasy and very HD tattoos, better scars, etc. I tried them all and weeded our the ones that didn't go with the character I was making.

For lighting it is mainly Project ENB with Climates of Tamriel, or Seasons of Skyrim.

Seriously, though, just XCE is enough. All the rest is pretty minor depending on tastes. I just got rather addicted to modding and tweaking and trying to prefect everything.

I wanted my character to still have a somewhat natural "vanilla" look, that was also rugged and warrior like but just a bit more polished than pure vanilla.

EDIT: I should add that for female characters the sky is the little. I mean for every male mod there is like a dozen female versions. You can pretty much create any female fantasy your heart desires.